The following season-opening paragraph was guest-written by Dennis Green, who was 16-32 in three years as coach of the Arizona Cardinals from 2004-06 and now has a lot of time on his hands for freelance writing:
The New England Patriots are who we thought they were. Crown their Moss and their Brady and the rest of the cast that routed the New York Jets on Sunday, 38-14.
Is the season over already? The Indianapolis Colts have weighed in with a strong dissenting opinion, but the Patriots on Sept. 9 looked dead-set on victory on Feb. 3 in Glendale, Ariz., where Super Bowl XLII will be played. Green, who used to coach Randy Moss while both were marking time in Minnesota, knows the Arizona layout. If he scores a Super Bowl media credential, Green can just recycle the above evergreen paragraph in five months.
By then, the chart of Moss' NFL career could very well resemble a giant check mark. It starts with a modest amount of success with the Vikings, then a huge dip with the still-hopeless Oakland Raiders, then a big bounce with the Patriots, who watched Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy write a feel-good story in the last Super Bowl that utterly failed to stir Bill Belichick's Grinch-like heart.
So Belichick and the Patriots' front office went hyper-proactive in the off-season. They stockpiled star wide receivers -- Moss, Donte Stallworth and Wes Welker -- as if they were the commissioners of a rigged fantasy league. (And maybe, metaphorically speaking, they are.)
Technically, the Moss acquisition was recorded as a trade with the Raiders. In 31 other NFL cities, the deal was classified a steal. Moss considered it a rescue. And in New England? The Patriots keep telling themselves it was an act of great humanitarianism.
On the same afternoon Moss debuted with the Patriots by catching nine passes from Tom Brady for 183 yards and a touchdown, the Raiders were falling behind at home by 17 points to the Detroit Lions (!), then blowing a 21-20 fourth-quarter lead and eventually losing, 36-21.
So, Moss' new team won by 24 points on the road and his old team lost by 15 points at home. That's a 39-point differential. As first impressions go, it would be difficult to beat that for a career upgrade.
The Raiders countered by signing Moss' famous former Minnesota battery-mate, Daunte Culpepper, as a lash-out leverage maneuver in the stalled JaMarcus Russell contract negotiations. Then, in classic post-Gruden/Gannon Raiders' fashion, they kept Culpepper on the bench for their opener and started instead Josh McCown, who couldn't start in Arizona for Green.
